detective, and legend has it that homicide detectives are all tough macho types, but I was feeling more than a little queasy by the time he finished burning through the third nail.
When he was done with the last one, Dr. Blair retrieved the splints and began to rebandage my hand. 'Just how much do you drink, Detective Beaumont? he asked.
'I beg your pardon?
'How much?
'No more than anybody else.
'When I talked to you on the phone last night, you sounded as though you had never heard that these hematomas needed to be drilled. And a few minutes ago, you seemed surprised to find out that the fingers were broken. We went over all of that Sunday night. In fact, I gave you a piece of paper, a form with written follow-up instructions on it.
'I don't remember seeing it, I said.
'You stuck it in the pocket of your tux.
I remembered the tux then, a rental that had been returned with the other wedding party duds on Monday morning. The Belltown Terrace concierge had handled the transaction.
'No wonder I couldn't find it, I said. 'The paper must have gotten sent back to the rental company.
Dr. Blair wasn't paying much attention to my excuses. Finished with the bandage, he said, 'Take off your shirt, loosen your belt, and lie down here on the table. I want to check something.
'Look, I objected, 'I broke my fingers, not my ribs.
But you don't argue with doctors, or at least I don't. Obligingly, I lay down on the table and he poked me in the gut.
'Did you know your liver is enlarged? he asked after a few moments of prodding.
'My what?
'Your liver's down three centimeters. How long's it been like that?
'I never knew it was, I said.
'You don't have a regular doctor? he asked again.
'No.
He picked up a pad of paper and jotted a name and phone number on it. 'This fellow's an internist who works right here in the building. His name is Dr. Wang. Go see him. Today. He'll need to do a complete workup on you. In the meantime, how long ago did you have a tetanus shot?
'I don't remember.
'If you don't remember, it's been too long. I'll send the nurse back in to give you one, and then you go on upstairs to see Wang. I'll call ahead and make sure they work you in.
I sat still long enough for the shot, but I didn't go see Dr. Wang. Instead, I went out to the parking garage, sat in my car, and brooded. I've never liked being told what to do, and Dr. Herman Blair was one bossy son of a bitch. I was offended by the way he had treated me. He had acted as though my forgetting his damned follow-up form was some sort of major crime.
I was offended, but worried too. More pissed than worried. Where the hell did some goddamned finger doctor get off telling me that my liver was enlarged? Enlarged liver? Me? Bullshit! Except for my hand, I was healthy as a horse.
And even as I sat there, I began to notice that my hand didn't hurt nearly as much as it had. Ugly as it had looked, Dr. Blair's drilling and blasting must have done some good. In fact, now that I thought about it, my whole hand was feeling much better.
And so, thumbing my nose at Dr. Blair, and to prove both to him and to myself that he was dead wrong, I started the car and drove to work. Let Dr. Blair put that in his pipe and smoke it.
Big Al was on his phone and waiting on hold when I came into our cubicle.
'What'd the doc say? he asked. 'How're the fingers?
'They're broken, I said.
He looked at me and shook his head. 'I knew that, for Chrissake! The doc told us that in the emergency room the other night. What the hell do you think I am, deaf or just plain stupid?
I sat down at the desk and thumbed through the collection of inter-office junk mail that had collected in the in basket during my absence. Whoever Al was waiting for came back on the phone. While that person talked, Big Al nodded from time to time. Eventually he scribbled a note on a piece of paper and pushed it across the desk to me. On it were printed the letters MS.
I looked at the note and tried to make sense of it. Ms. who? The note meant nothing to me. Finally Al hung up the phone.
'What's this? I asked.
'That's what's the matter with Bernice Oliver's husband. MS-multiple sclerosis. He's had it for years, and he's gradually getting more and more crippled up.
'Who were you talking to?
'Some lady at RFLink. Mrs. Motormouth. I called to find out when Mrs. Oliver left there, and this woman was an hour-long fountain of information. She's been with Blakeslee for years. She told me that Mrs. Oliver gave her two weeks notice the same day Tadeo Kurobashi got his walking papers. It evidently created quite a stir around there at the time. Interesting, don't you think?
'It's something to check into. What about DataDump?
'They weren't open last night, either, and there's no answer on the phone this morning. What say we drive out there right now and have a look-see?
'Sounds like a plan, I said.
DataDump was located in a tired one-story building off N.W. 65th on Cleopatra Avenue. From the looks of it, the building contained both business and living quarters. The door was locked. An orange-and-black closed sign was tucked in the corner of one window.
We looked around for vehicles, expecting to see DataDump's mobile shredder parked somewhere nearby, but there was no sign of it. In fact, there were no visible vehicles of any kind parked near the modest storefront building. Inside, however, we could hear the steady patter of a droning television game show.
There was a bell beside the door. Big Al rang it with a heavy hand. We waited a minute or so before he rang it again, even more insistently. This time, the television set switched off and the curtain behind the front window rustled as someone peeked out at us.
A moment later, the door was flung open. 'Who are you and what do you want?
The woman at the door was probably only in her thirties, but she looked world-weary and bedraggled. Her long hair was lanky and unkempt with a streak of gray running through it that was far too plain to be a dye job. She wore a faded bathrobe and scruffy slippers. Her mouth had a hopeless downturned cast to it. 'Can't you read the sign? It says we're closed.
'We're police officers, Big Al said.
'Cops! She jumped as she spat out the word and would have slammed the door in our faces if Big Al hadn't caught it and held it open. Police officers weren't the lady's favorite people.
'Are you the owner of DataDump? Big Al asked.
She nodded.
'We'd like to talk to you then, if you have a minute.
She stepped aside, letting the door open a little wider but not inviting us inside. 'What about? she asked glumly.
'A company called MicroBridge.
Her eyes dilated at the word. It takes real fear to make eyes do that in broad daylight.
'What about it?
'You had someone working at a place called MicroBridge on Sunday night this last week, didn't you?
'My husband, Dean.
'Would it be possible to talk to him?
'He's gone.
'Do you know where he is or when he'll be back?
'No. We were getting answers, but we weren't getting much information, and we wouldn't either, not as long
